A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord said to his disciples, John chapter one. I have come to light a fire on earth. How I wish the blaze were ignited, set on fire. I have a baptism to receive.
What anguish I feel till it all is over. Do you think I have come to establish peace on Earth? I assure you the contrary is true. I have come for division. From now on, a household of five will be divided three against two and two against three.
Father will be split against son and son against his own father. Mother against daughter and daughter against mother. Mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And this is the good news, the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord.
Let us pray. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This is my suggestion. This text that we we put on the Christmas cards with all this froth about Noel and peace and goodwill and all that. You of course, my modest and humble suggestion will not be very widely observed.
You can be sure of that. You don't often hear these words of our lord quoted, and yet it's plain common sense. Of course, it happens to be pretty much it's common sense of an old man, old Greek named Aristotle. So that, of course, is three strikes against him right off. But you see, the point is simply this.
Whatever you take a stand for, if you take a stand on anything, anything at all, I don't care what it is, if you take a stand and say this is so, then automatically, and whether you like it or not, you are taking a stand against everything that's opposed to what you say is so, and you can't avoid this dichotomy. You can talk about all the ecumenism in the world you want. You can talk about all this wonderful fraternity and community and living together in peace and joy and all of this stuff. And, of course, it's really nonsense, most of it, because that's not the way life is. You can't love something without hating its opposites.
I said hate. There's a place in this world for hate. Now you'll say for if you say two and two are four, and you say, yes, I think I yes. That's true. I accept that.
That's that's the truth. Well, then when I come along and say two and two are five, what are you going to do about it? Are you gonna say, well, of course, we're all living together, and we we this is a pluralistic society, and, you know, we must all love each other and let's go out and have a glass of beer because the last thing makes some sense. Because if you say we are that that it really doesn't make too much difference whether two and two or four or two and two or five or or what. Once you take that attitude, then let's not talk about truth anymore.
We're wasting our time, and time's valuable. It's the most precious thing you have, don't waste it on nonsense. So this if you have if so that if you accept something, if you love something, if you want to hold to that something as true or hold to that something as false, then you must hate. You must reject the opposites. You can't possibly avoid that.
And that's what our lord is. See, our lord said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Christ said that. And, therefore, when he comes to tell us either in his own person or through his contemporary church, his living voice, the rock of Peter, when we are told what that way in particular is or the truth and the life, then if we accept it, we have to reject what's opposed to it, its opposites, its contraries, its contradictories. You can't escape this except unless you live in the world in which you're living.
Please believe me. What I'm saying now is not accepted. You step out of this church into many a classroom where you're where you will not hear this. You will be told something like this. Well, now we must after all, especially when it comes to certain things like religion or morality, because nobody takes this attitude towards mathematics.
Nobody takes this attitude towards the positive sciences. Oh, no. But those very same people will tell you, well, now you know when it comes down to what you call right and wrong. After all, who really knows? And after all, it's not a matter of the be either black or white, contrary.
After all, it's really a matter of something in between. Well, if you can't know what black is and if you can't know what white is, how are you going to know anything about what's in between? And therefore, I say, let's not talk about morality or religion. It's silly to talk about it if you have nothing to talk about. Or we will say, well, now, you know, that's that old Aristotelian logic.
So, you know, don't be a dodo bird. The dodo bird is considered out of step with the contemporary world, if not completely dead and gone. Let us live in the real world where we have to live together. So let's not let's not get involved with all these discussions about religion or morality. Let's do what we can.
Live as you best you can, as comfortable as you can with yourself, of course, with yourself. Well, that's always at it. And, of course, this is nonsense. I mean, no sense. And so what our lord is saying and notice how he repeats this.
He just doesn't talk in terms that I've been talking about, contraries and contradictories and the square of opposition to propositions and error. Christ doesn't talk like that. He's he's had more sense than that. After all, he's god. And what Christ is telling us is in really dramatic, spectacular, concrete terms that I have come to split families.
Now any of you who have any knowledge of the oriental family, of the Jewish family, of an Arab family, you will realize that that is a I'm talking about present tense, and it was true in our lord's time. That's a closely knit clan, very closely knit. And to come and say, I have come to split up the family, that was heresy of the first water. You've got to see how absolutely revolutionary those these words of Christ are, that I have come not to put the family together, but to split it up, to splinter it. Supposing I came up in this pulpit on this coming Sunday and spoke to this congregation, I am talking to you with the full intent of helping you to split your families up.
I say that man's got ought to be over in Saint Elizabeth if it's still open. If not Saint Elizabeth, then ship him over to Spring Grove. He needs he needs custodial care. Well, let me tell you that when the people Christ was talking to were far less receptive to such a crazy idea as a congregation in Garrett Park in the year of Ahold, nineteen eighty seven. Believe me.
And yet Christ is saying, I have come to split, to divide, to antagonize the family. But then Christ doesn't stop there. He goes on and on and on to set father against son and son against father. That was unthinkable, and it still is unthinkable in an oriental family. A son to rise up against his father.
Why? That's unthinkable. Off with his head. And then Christ has said, I have come to do just that, to set a son against his old man and the father against his own flesh and blood. Then Christ goes on.
He keeps he keeps it up to set mother against daughter, daughter against mother. Notice how he reverses it. So you will I don't know why he did it. Because what he was saying was so unacceptable, so antagonistic to the most basic fundamental truths of a Jewish family. I have come to set a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
Remember that the tie between those two was much tighter in those days over there than it is here today. Believe me. The mother was still the mother, and the daughter-in-law was still her daughter. The mother-in-law ruled the roost. And Christ is saying, I have come to set that daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
And Christ continues, the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law. Anyone who listens to this or take and no one can get you can't cannot extenuate. You cannot diminish. You cannot take the revolutionary force out of Christ's words. They are disturbing.
To be a follower of Christ is to be disturbed. It's not to be comfortable. Nobody's comfortable carrying a cross. Nobody's comfortable trying to follow Jesus Christ. Anyone who thinks that trying to follow Christ is an anesthetic, he never tried it, or he didn't know anyone who ever did try it because it's not that way at all.
Just think of what it means if you say, I will say my morning prayers every day. Just take a little simple thing like that and live up to it. Or anything it anything at all. I don't care what saying prayers before meals or anything you want and to do it every day. Try it.
See how easy it is. Following Christ is difficult, and we don't and there's no way of getting away from it. And if we try to get away from we're getting away from our lord. There's the point. We're we're we're we are escaping.
We are intentionally turning our backs on Christ. So with my little recommendation to use this excerpt of today's gospel on your Christmas cards is not going to be widely accepted, and yet it's much truer to the spirit of Christmas than all the froth that we will be exposed to and are already being exposed to. So why should a Christian be why should we be in the least disturbed when we find ourselves in an uncomfortable position because we are following Jesus Christ and his living voice in Peter the rock? Because that's where the crunch is today. There's where the division is coming today right in The USA when they talk about the American Catholic church.
Who wants to belong to the American Catholic church? And they more more than wanna belong to the old German church or the Lutheran church or the Methodist church. Johnny's come lately of the sixteenth century. The only church I wanna belong to is the church of Jesus Christ. And if I can't see my way to getting in there and staying in there, I could care less about the rest.
Who bothers? Because you cannot have it both ways. You cannot love Christ and be with Christ without rejecting, without hating, as opposed to loving things that are opposed to Christ. There's no way you can do it. We try, and we call it sin.
We call it negotiating. We call it compromising. Forget it. It won't work. It's been tried, and it has failed.
Our lord is a very severe task master. At the same time is the loving lord who said, if you take up my cross, you will find it sweet and its burden light. He said that. Believe him. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.